Multi-track Recording and Music Production

Throughout this term we as a group have been working on our own cover of Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. After it was all finished and we were happy with it we took of an individual mix from the studio so we could edit it anywhere we wanted to (ideally using pro tools as nothing would need to be changed).

When doing the final edit I have made some changed which I find made the song better in my eyes. To start off with I made inactive and hid of tracks and instruments I didn’t need. These were the slide guitars (as it didn’t sound in tune when played with the other guitars), and the rack toms, because we didn’t use any in the piece. Then I started to tidy up the tracks, making it so no noise from headphones/breathing was coming through when the instruments weren’t being played. I found this mostly dominant with the vocals, when Sam or Mihail stopped singing there was a lot of headphone volume coming through.

When we recorded the vocals there were 3 takes, which were put into a playlist. I started off by comping the vocals. This was done by choosing the part of the vocal which was the best pressing the C key and then going back to the main vocal track and pasting this in its place, I did this with certain parts to make sure I got the best possible take. When using EQ on the vocals I brought up the high end giving it more air, and taking out the low end so there was no breathing sounds in the track. I added a medium room reverb to make them sound fuller and then I used a compressor which made the overall vocal level higher. No panning was needed on the main vocals as I wanted them to be a centre point to the song.

With the backing vocals made them pan hard left and right, they were at a lower level than the main vocals. I did the same EQ techniques but instead I added Chorus to the voice to make it more hollow. With Mihails vocals this sounds like a very Ozzy Osbourne type vocal.

I did different techniques with the drums, firstly I started off by adding EQ to the Overhead mic’s and them compressing them. I only needed to apply this to one and then that data could be copied across to the other overhead. I also panned them hard left and right. The kick and snare mic’s stay in the middle to give the sonic feeling of the drum kit as this is how it is typically laid out.

To EQ the overhead mic’s I added a high pass filter to take out some of the low end by about 2DB, I then removed a small spike of low end and then increased some of the high end (around 5K) to make the cymbals sound brighter. I added compression onto the overheads so they gave less low end rumble.

 

For the kick drum I added a lot more low end, and high mids. I also got rid of a tiny spike of mid frequencies, this gave the kick more of a punchy sound.

 

When editing the snare drum I added little bits from low end, mid frequencies, high mids and high frequencies. This gives the fat popping sound that a snare drum should have on the top mic. On the bottom mic I added more low end, low mids and some high frequencies, giving more air and a more crisp sound from snare wires.

The piano was a brought in for the second and third verse of my piece, the mandola was used only in the first verse, I felt that if it was used in more than this it would have became overpowering compared to the vocals. The mandola was panned hard left, the piano hard right. I only added EQ to the piano, and when I did this I removed a large portion of low end and added in more high end, making it more crisp.

 

When editing the mandola I used EQ to bring out more of the high end and get rid of the low end, this was crucial for this track because when in solo it was giving off a low pulsing sound. So by taking out the low end and some of the low mids I got rid of the sound. I also used compression on the mandola to reduce this problem.

 

 

Originally we had 3 bass guitar tracks, but in the end I removed the AKG D112 mic and just used the DI input and the Beyerdynamic M201. The DI was more bassy but the M201 gave more tone to the track. I only used a single band EQ for this and for both I used a High pass filter to get rid of the high end.

 

For the solo I used all three tracks, the outer two were panned mid left and right and I added delay to them. This gives a more rock type solo. The EQ I used was a preset which increased the low end and the high mid frequencies which makes it sound brighter and fuller.

 

For the power chords on the guitars we double tracked them and then panned 3 left and 3 right, this is done in more rock songs which give a fuller sound. It makes the guitar deeper and overall increases the quality. To EQ all the guitars I made one preset and then copied these onto each track. I increased the low end and the high mids. I also increased the highs by a tiny amount, the gave the guitar a distorted, rock type sound.

 

This is the final mix board with comments added. I put the comments in to show what type of mic was used and why, also I added what these do. This also shows the final levels of how the track is mixed.

This week we did an overdubbing session, these were additional extras which we were adding to the piece. We added a Mandola and a piano part to the verses. This really gave our pieces a great diversity and when the chorus kicked in it made it sound a lot more powerful.

To record the Mandola we used a SE-X1 microphone with a cardioid pattern. Firstly this was placed by the 12th fret, we found that this became ineffective so we moved the mic closer to the sound hole.

Oliver used a tremolo effect with the Mandola and then mimicked the chord build up during the bridge. This was recorded onto channel 1.

The second overdub was a piano, which was used in the verses as well, however with this I plan to bring in the piano parts when the vocal parts start, to give dynamics to the piece.

We used the DI input from the live room into the studio.

The mic we used was Neumann U87, this has 3 different polar patterns, omni, cardioid and figure of eight. We chose to use cardioid because this picks up a better range of signals from the front opposed to the back.

The vocals were recorded in the dead room.

We used a pop shield to cover the Neumann. Pop shields are used to protects the diaphragm of the microphone when singing into it, as they are quite fragile. The pop shield captures the plosives, the p’s and b’s. As they give a low frequency burst of air. Even in editing, these are hard to get out of recording.

We created a playlist for the vocal track, this meant that we could do numerous takes without having to create and divert tracks. Also we could choose the track we wanted to use after, we did 3 takes.

Mihail also did the back up vocals for this week, these were double tracked to give a fuller more rock like feel.

This week was bass week, Mihail was on the bass guitar. The people on the desk set the input gain and the levels for the drum track and bass track, doing this means that the bass comes into the right level in the song.

Mics used:

AKG D112 – This mic is typically used to pic up the lower frequencies which a bass guitar or bass drum would give off. This was placed at the centre of the cone, to pick up the low end of the bass guitar.

Beyerdynamic M201 – This mic is placed near the edge of the cone, to pic up another signal, however, this caused phase issues as the two signals were almost in phase with eachother, so the quality was reduced, to correct this we flipped the phase on one of the mice

DI box – This DI is connected from the amp to the studio.

We didn’t need to use any headphones because Mihail was in the dead room where the speakers can feed the sound through, however in later takes he used headphones so he could hear the drum track clearer.